Kristi Argyilan Joins Target; Financial Times Experiments

IPG’s Kristi Argyilan, who led programmatic strategy at the holding company, has left for Target, reports Ad Age. Her new role is SVP of media and guest engagement. Ad Age quotes a Target statement: “In her new role she will be responsible for leading as well as integrating Target's paid, earned, owned and shared media initiatives.” Ah, so everything media. Read it. Programmatic will be there somewhere.

The FT’s New Digital Plan

In an effort to combat viewability issues within the ad industry, the Financial Times is adopting a new digital trading strategy. The publisher will now offer blocks of time to advertisers and promote more effective campaigning by measuring the amount of time users are exposed to ads. Working with analytics provider Chartbeat, the FT expects to launch the new strategy in 2014's fourth quarter. The FT's director of digital advertising, Jon Slade, explained, “We have three trials running at the moment, and we’re able to tell pretty conclusively so far that when we serve an ad to an audience that we know is going to spend a long time with the ad in view that the benefit to that client is far more profound.” Read more via The Drum.

Facebook’s Listening

Facebook's latest ad strategy delves deeper into uncovering its users’ habits with a new Shazam-style feature that picks up audio data, says Adweek. The service works via the Facebook mobile app, using smartphone microphones to detect music or television audio for sharing on the social-media site. The audio detection is optional, according to Facebook, and the data is purportedly not recorded or stored. For advertising purposes, Facebook will use the genre of audio detected to suggest similar recommendations. Read more.

“Many businesspeople don’t seriously distinguish between leadership and management, but they should," argues Doug Weaver in this week's The Drift column. "It always comes down to what the managers do; what they commit to and how they hold their sellers accountable." In dissecting the makings of a good manager, Weaver says crucial qualities include foresight, critical thought and a memory like a steel trap. Read more.

Next Please

Visual Revenue founder Dennis Mortensen is off on his next entrepreneurial venture after selling his business to content marketing tech platform Outbrain in 2013. Mortensen announces in an email that he won’t be optimizing the delivery of editorial in the new venture as he was at Visual Revenue, but rather the scheduling of meetings. Read the release.